From the Bookshelf of Science and Inquiry…

Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist

William R. Maples

Why we're reading this: i love forensics because it is my first love (science) helping people directly. i had no idea one could t…more
[close] i love forensics because it is my first love (science) helping people directly. i had no idea one could tell so much from bones.

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Oct 14, 2019 Petra X rated it it was amazing

Shelves: medicine-science, 2019-read, psycho-neurology-crime, 10-star-books, 2019-100-reviews, reviewed, death

This book could be a manual for murderers - the author discusses the details of unsolveable cases. So, to give yourself the best chance of getting away with murder: firstly, get some tools but not locally. Preferably in a place without cameras. Maybe online, if not, pay cash. Go somewhere where no-one will hear you. Wear protective clothing. Hack person you killed into pieces. Distribute them widely preferably underwater and not in garbage bags. Throw the tools into a lake. Burn the clothing.

Wha This book could be a manual for murderers - the author discusses the details of unsolveable cases. So, to give yourself the best chance of getting away with murder: firstly, get some tools but not locally. Preferably in a place without cameras. Maybe online, if not, pay cash. Go somewhere where no-one will hear you. Wear protective clothing. Hack person you killed into pieces. Distribute them widely preferably underwater and not in garbage bags. Throw the tools into a lake. Burn the clothing.

What are the differences and similarities between a pathologist and a forensic anthropologist when it comes to dead bodies? A pathologist is a medical doctor with extra training. A forensic anthropologist isn't the guy to call for an autopsy in the hospital, it's a relatively rare career requiring a PhD in anthropology and deals with putrefying bodies, gone beyond the greasy wax of adipocere into bones picked clean by time and insects. The author was able to identify the cremated ashes found in a box discarded on an interstate even. This is a really interesting book.

Both though, sometimes examine disgusting corpses exhumed from vaults full of the gases of decay and decomposition. Both look for the truth, for the method of murder, for the clues to the murderer himself. How and why did these people end up as corpses? n corpses, or bits of them, even recent ones.

There was a case where the widow refused to accept that her husband had committed suicide. He had but he didn't mean to and it was difficult to sort out. It was really a case of 'truth being stranger than fiction'

People at a train station observe a man at the far end of the platform opposite plunge onto the rails right in front of an oncoming train. His family refuse to accept that he committed suicide and he certainly wasn't pushed. What the author found was that he was peeing on to the tracks and the stream hit the live rail, electricity travelled straight up it and he was electrocuted and died before his body even fell onto the tracks.

Related books I read recently are very good, Unnatural Causes is forensic pathology and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death is very light and entertaining. Neither are in the same league as this book.

Read October 2019, reviewed December 2019 ...more

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Mar 18, 2015 Jim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2non-fiction, 1paper, science, biography

A very interesting account of Maples' career, thoughts, & more interesting cases. He's about the same age as William M. Bass, best known for Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales. I found Bass more enjoyable to read, although no more interesting. Neither can top Mary Roach in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, but they have their moments & get into areas she didn't touch on.

Maples tends to be (write?) a bit pompous, although he has e ...more

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May 24, 2012 Kathy rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-non-fiction, x-feb-12-thru-jan-13

With eloquence, humor, and a bit of arrogance peeking through, Maples (and his co-writer) tell us not just some of his cases but also his own background and a bit of the history and culture of forensics.

Long before Bones and CSI, even before Quincy, I wanted to a forensic scientist. (I also wanted to be an archaeologist, a mountain man, and a sheep rancher in Australia; I didn't do any of those things either.) So I am always interested in reading about other peoples' adventures along those line ...more

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